The Five Stages of Collapse

The Five Stages of Collapse: The rise and fall of a first nation’s empire.

The paintings I produced are homage to a similar series produced by the 19th century American artist, Thomas Cole. His paintings depict the growth and fall of a city, reflecting the common perception of the rise and fall of a civilization. The city depicted on his paintings is reminiscent of a Hellenistic or Roman metropolis in style. The five stages depicted in his Course of Empires series are The Savage State, The Arcadian/Pastoral State, The Consummation of Empire, The Destruction of Empire, and Desolation. In my version, each stage is centred on the Hudson Bay Company outpost, Fort Langley, the eventual birthplace of British Columbia as a setting. Here in the so called Savage State, instead of the savage land of the Native Americans being discovered by Europeans, it is the abandoned land of the European colonists that is discovered by the Native Americans. It is simply the fort abandoned, showing just the landscape as it was before appropriation. The following series of images depicts the colonial infrastructure and technologies left behind being taken over by an expansive Native empire of a varied Pacific Northwest makeup. The height of the civilization is represented by the appearance of a dense village built within the palisades of Fort Langley. Finally, collapse is represented by the returning European forces reclaiming Fort Langley. Desolation reveals a ruined Fort Langley town site, with no person in site. Given this plot, the question of how the colonists disappeared is a complex and necessary matter.

In the acclaimed Jared Diamond books, Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse; there are several factors that could determine the fate of any organized culture or empire. In the case for the Native Americans, the dominating factor for their collapse at the hand of European invasion was dealt by germs. Vast epidemics heralded the arrival of the Europeans and scores of native populations were wiped out as the many Eurasian viruses spread across the continents of America ahead of the invading forces themselves. Expedition teams would often come across vacant villages, completed devastated by small pox and other such European diseases. In this effect, it completely annihilated native populations and potential resistance against colonialism. So, given that knowledge, for my alternate timeline I posited that centuries prior to the Columbian era, high population density in the Mississippi basin culture led to the formation of a contagious disease which spread across North America. By the time of the European colonization, the virus didn’t resurface until the mid-1800s when the Russians, Americans and the British were vying for control of the western frontier. At this time, European epidemics that ravaged Mexico and the eastern portion of North America have not yet struck the native populations of the Pacific Northwest significantly. My alternate history takes place well before a smallpox epidemic originating in Fort Victoria in 1862, which devastates native settlements along the British Columbia and Alaskan coastline. However, it is the assumed resurfaced native-borne disease that sweeps across the colonies in my alternate history, devastating not the native population but the colonist ones.

With this plausible scenario, I then have the foundation to my series of imagery and the inherent plot behind each window into this brief alternate timeline. In the first image, the settlers within the Hudson’s Bay Trading Company’s Fort Langley have been devastated by an epidemic. Soon, surviving members of the fort begin to pack up and flee east and southward, abandoning the fort. In the first image, the fort is shown in a state of abandonment in the morning light at the dawn of a new age. However, as the fort is a regional trading hub between the settlers and natives, local Coast Salish begin to salvage and settle within the site for the safety provided by the bastion’s palisades. Already, the Kwantlen Stó:lõ resettled their main village to be in close proximity to the fort primarily for trade and protection from slave raids from the north. Here in the Arcadian state, a few local groups have established settlement in the fort as its location on the banks of the Fraser River facilitates growth in trade along the river. The infrastructure and technology left behind by the settlers are appropriated by local native groups and this then leads to a population boom as some industrious groups adopt the agricultural plots and methods south of the fort. Soon, mass immigration to the fort site creates a sort of regional capital and trade centre. Here in the consummation of empire phase, the Fort Langley site is shown in the high noon of the day, packed with longhouses and other structures. Among these buildings are architectural aesthetics and art that reflect other nations such as the Kwakiutl, Tsimshian and Haida to reflect the growth of trade and communication between language groups and nations in the region. The Big House, the large white structure in the fort that originally housed the Hudson Bay Chief Trader, had become appropriated as a central living structure in the settlement for several prominent Kwantlen families as the increasingly multicultural settlement at Fort Langley began to stratify. Here totem poles appropriated from Kwakiutl settlements stand as trophies. Structures such as the storehouse and cooperage retained their original purposes as before. Other buildings in the fort became mixed use structures or living quarters for visiting and squatting individuals. Outside the walls of the fort, longhouses and structures proliferate as population exceeds the fort’s capacity. Through the Fort Langley site, extensive trade and influence along the coastline from Oregon to Alaska is achieved. However, as that is the peak of the settlement’s influence, it wasn’t long until British colonial forces returned to retake the lands lost, especially with pressure coming from the United States in regard to the threat of them claiming that land.

Arriving via a flotilla of naval ships, British forces sail up the mouth of the Fraser and bombard the settlement from the riverbank. The army then disembarks and lays siege to the fort, as shown in the destruction phase. British soldiers go longhouse to longhouse, setting fire to the settlement. Shown up on the bastion walls are musket-wielding native warriors wearing cedar slated armour similar to the kind developed by the Tlingit, appropriated from them by trade and conflict. However, given the organization and technological advantage of the British forces, the natives are defeated and Fort Langley is left to ruin. In the final image, Desolation, the Fort Langley site is shown grown over and forgotten late in the evening after the sun has set. The structures that burnt down or collapsed provide a hilly topography over the site as some erect structures still permeate the site including portions of the palisades and some totem stands.

With this image, the rise and fall of the Fort Langley culture is shown along with the rise and fall of the sun, completing a cycle inherent with every organized culture or nation in the history of man. It’s important to know that no civilization goes through growth without going through eventual collapse. It could collapse for any reason but it’s an ending that’s just as much of a chance as it was with how the civilization began. How empires rise and fall is dependent on circumstance, much like how my alternate history for this Coast Salish Empire was one based on disease staving off the conquest by Europe and the appropriation of the European colonial infrastructure left behind. More or less, this experiment was one to reflect my interest in understanding why cultures rise and fall, a key component to ethnographic study. If we can understand the past and theorize the circumstances determining the outcomes of history, we can better understand the present and perhaps even predict circumstances that determine the future.